USDA: Approaching Cold Front to Generate Midwest Showers

USDA's Joint Ag Weather Facility says in the Corn Belt, an approaching cold front is generating scattered showers and thunderstorms. "Shower activity is most significant in the Great Lakes region," USDA reports. In advance of the storminess, heat and short-term rainfall deficits are maintaining stress on reproductive corn and soybeans in the southwestern Corn Belt, according to USDA.

In the West, USDA reports relatively cool weather and scattered showers in the Four Corners states contrasts with hot, dry weather across the northern half of the region. "Northwestern heat is favorable for winter wheat maturation and harvesting," USDA details.

On the Plains, USDA says dry weather favors crop development and fieldwork, including winter wheat harvesting across northern production areas. "Cool weather lingers across the southern Plains in the wake of drought-easing rainfall, but unfavorably dry conditions persist on the central Plains," USDA adds.

In the South, USDA says wet weather continues across Florida’s peninsula, but favorably dry weather covers the remainder of the well-watered southern Atlantic states. "Scattered showers are providing local relief from short-term dryness across the Mid-South and the lower Mississippi Valley," USDA continues.

In its outlook USDA says the ongoing heat wave across the Midwest and Northeast will soon end in the wake of a cold front’s passage. "The cold front will also spark widespread rainfall (locally 1 to 3 inches or more) across the eastern one-third of the U.S., and result in severe thunderstorms on July 19-20 from the Midwest into the Northeast," USDA explains. Meanwhile, an active monsoon circulation will produce widespread, drought-easing showers from the Southwest to the central Plains, USDA continues. "In contrast, mostly dry weather will accompany building heat from the Pacific Coast to the northern High Plains," USDA reports.